Hosting info for Australians

Let’s talk about web hosting in Australia for a sec. While most people know what it is, only few know how to find a great hosting company. Between all the confusing hosting lingo, different pricing structures, features, data centre locations, & all the other stuff, now wonder people have no idea where to start. And while there a number of great web hosting resources around, how would you even get to them?

On this page, I don’t have a lot of content at the moment, just an article about managed web hosting, and about hosting mergers in the Australia hosting industry. Have fun reading it nonetheless 🙂

Australian web hosting: What Are The Disadvantages Of Managed Hosting?

Managed Web Hosting means the hardware/software for the client is leased out by Australian web hosting company. Though Managed Web Hosting is quite useful for people who are hard-pressed for time, don’t have the technical know-how of handling servers, it does come along with some disadvantages. It is better to consider managed web hosting if you have the necessary budget for such a large investment. Let’s look at some of the disadvantages of managed website hosting:

Costly: In Managed Hosting, the client has to pay a high amount of monthly fees to the host not just for hosting, but also for the support and service they provide. The constant monitoring, immense resources, constant upkeep of the server are some of the services the host provides for which they tend to charge a hefty sum.

No Control: Only the data that the client enters is theirs. Everything else is owned by the host and they generally manage all technical aspects. This gives the client no say or control over how the server is managed or run as the server is the property of the service provider. Also some Hosts don’t allow administrative/ root access to their clients though they may have paid for a fully managed hosting plan. Everything is usually optimised by the host company and they prefer to keep it that way. If something doesn’t work, the client needs to rely on the professionals at the web hosting provider.

Limitations: The Host generally gives the client a Data Transfer Allowance which if exceeded is liable to a financial penalty.

Waste: Generally a host can manage many clients on their server. If the client’s website is large, then the amount paid by the client may be accurate considering the bandwidth that will be in use. But for a small to medium website, the load may be below typical levels which means such clients end up paying more for resources that they don’t need or use.

Loss in Customers: Supposing the client’s website doesn’t have the infrastructure to support a huge crowd, but it gets many hits and traffic to the website picks up. Due to poor site design, the site crawls and customers may not come back. The client will then need to contact the hosts to do the necessary corrections and changes to their website.

Plugins and Themes Limitations: In WordPress blogs, Managed Hosting often has limitations on certain plugins and themes that can be used. They do this to ensure that wordpress installations are fast and secure, but become a problem if a necessary plug-in can’t be installed.

Australian website hosting mergers: The Top 3

Web hosting is the business of providing server space for websites owned by individuals or organisation that do not possess one of their own.

Australia is a commonwealth country with its main industries being mining, food processing’s, chemicals, etc. It is also emerging as one of the main financial and business hubs. With the advent of the internet age, ecommerce sector has gained prominence. Its retail ecommerce sales have been increasing on an average of 3% every year.

With the above favourable situations web hosting business seems lucrative in the Australian web hosting market. There have been a number of mergers and acquisitions in the past few years in the web hosting business.

Few of them are listed below:

Web hosting company HostGenius has acquired its rival speedcoast.co.au in june 2016. The acquisition amount has not been specified but was quoted to be less than six figures. Both the companies are Sydney based. They both possess similar platform architecture and target similar markets. The acquirer HostGenuis company is 8-year-old and has no plans of altering speed.com.au’s brand

The company Zettagrid that provides IaaS acquired cloud and hosting company Connexim in June 2016. The terms of the deal have been not disclosed. Connexim had been a hosting company from the year 1993 but started providing cloud services from 2009. The brand Connexim will be retired and the client base will be migrated to Zettagrid. This acquisition will help Zettagrid in developing its product range and increasing its scale and expand its presence in the Australian market.

Web hosts Australian servers acquired in June 2016 three hosting companies namely Dedicated servers, Indigo and syncom. The deal also includes 300 racks and 3000 servers with two data centres located in Sydney and Brisbane. This acquisition has made Australian servers the largest dedicated hosting service in Australia and also largest private hosting network provider in about 17 locations in and around Australia.

They are retaining key staff members from dedicated servers, indigo and syncom to ensure undisrupted service to the clients. With this expansion Australian servers plan to come up with new locations, additional staff and improved customer support system.

Mergers and acquisitions prove beneficial to the economy by providing cost efficiency, through economies of scale, increase in revenue and tax gains.